The award recognizes innovation and excellence in using information technology in the field of nursing to directly improve the quality of care and patient safety while maximizing nursing resources, improve the work experience of nurses, or to help further the professional practice of nursing. The award will be presented to a team of nursing professionals at a health care organization (hospital, physician group practice or any other care-giving site). At least one of the primary coordinators of the I.T. project must be a nurse. The project must be ongoing.
To qualify for this award, a health care organization must submit an essay with detailed information on the nursing information technology project and the specific, measurable results of that project. The contribution of nurses to the innovative project must be clearly identified.
Judges, who will include nurses, may interview finalists by phone before determining the award recipient. The March 2013 issue of the magazine will include a story on the winning organization and runners-up.
To enter, submit a document attached to an e-mail to gary.baldwin@sourcemedia.com. At the top of the document, list the following:
* Name of organization and address.
* Description of size of organization (total physicians, total inpatient licensed beds, and so forth).
* Name of key nurse(s) involved in the project, and their roles.
* Name of person who prepared the nomination and contact information (phone and e-mail).
* Name of senior executive with organization who could be available to answer questions, and contact information.
Entrants should prepare an essay of up to 1,250 words answering the following questions:
1. What is the nursing I.T. project that is worthy of recognition?
2. What is the technology involved?
a. For off-the-shelf products, please describe what additional configuration was required to achieve the system functionality associated with the nomination, and the role that nursing played in making configuration decisions.
b. For home-grown products, please describe the role that nursing played in the development of the system functionality associated with this nomination.
3. What is innovative or groundbreaking about the project?
4. What are the measurable results/outcomes of the project? Be as specific and detailed as possible. Examples of results may include: achieving tangible improvements in the quality of care; reducing the time nurses spend on non-care activities by automating tasks; improving workload management through telehealth technologies and other systems; enabling performance improvement through data analytics and reporting.
5. How does the project support quality improvement? Focus areas may include the Institute of Medicine’s Domains of Quality: effectiveness, efficiency, equity, patient-centeredness, safety, and timeliness. Projects may support other federal and regulatory reporting programs, such as meaningful use or Joint Commission requirements.
6. In addition, the essay should describe the contribution of nurse(s) to the project and whether the nurse(s) was the project leader, product manager, trainer, implementer or executive sponsor. A spokesperson for the entering organization should be available the week of Dec. 20 in case the judges need to ask questions directly.
Questions about the award should be e-mailed to gary.baldwin@sourcemedia.com.
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